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Ambition is vital, but dangerous: it is a keen motive and a driving force, but over what edge can it drive the artist?

Eric Maisel

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Eric Maisel
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: January 14
Author
Playwright
Psychologist
Teacher
The Bronx
New York City
Driving
Drive
Ambition
Dangerous
Keen
Force
Vital
Artist
Motive
Edge
Edges

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The more sophisticated we become - as we pierce reality and see the void beyond - the more our sense of wonder is destroyed, along with our reasons for being.
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A time comes, after years in the trenches, when the artist begins to fathom what his career has looked like so far and what it will look like if he continues as he's proceeded.
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Talent is so loaded a word, so full to the brim with meanings, that an artist might be wise to forget about it altogether and just keep on working.
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It is the job of each artist to believe in the possibility of meaningful, substantial, and sustainable change.
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It is in an artist's real interest to congratulate herself more often: not out of narcissism, but in her role as her own dear friend and advocate.
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Creativity requires introspection, self-examination, and a willingness to take risks. Because of this, artists are perhaps more susceptible to self-doubt and despair than those who do not court the creative muses.
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An inability to choose is a hallmark of anxiety... The too-anxious artist, afraid to choose, will halt dead in the water.
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When you flow like water you bring all of your talents and resources to your creative work... Flow around every obstacle you encounter, including any you've erected yourself.
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Art and business may be strange bedfellows, but an artist must make room in her bed for both.
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If, because of anxiety and self-doubt, you procrastinate and only think about working, you'll feel more exhausted than if you'd created for hours.
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The artist, who must venture into the studio and risk there, and then venture into the marketplace and risk again, is obliged to learn how her defences work, so that she can drop and raise her guard instantly.
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By 'expecting nothing' you are not 'giving up.' Far from it! You are making a decision to focus on what needs to be done rather than on outcomes.
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Love is the spirit that motivates the artist's journey. The love may sublime, raw, obsessive, passionate, awful. or thrilling, but whatever its quality, it's a powerful motive in the artist's life.
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Boredom is the thing that regularly arrives between excitements and episodes of meaning: it is as natural as the tides, and in it an artist can drown.
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Isn't today a day to devote to craft? Isn't tomorrow? Isn't every day, routinely, until the end of time?
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The middle way cannot be achieved by dividing two extremes in half.
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Many people are embarrassed to create in public. It feels unseemly to them, like kissing in plain view... Make a spectacle of yourself.
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The artist, busy and unsettled, can find a moment's peace - and even whole-being rejuvenation - by quietly attuning to a red sky, a gray sky, a black sky, a blue sky.
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Go directly to work' means... when an idea strikes, you drop everything and when your work bell tolls, you answer it.
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Creativity is part sweat - not just beads of it, but sometimes buckets.
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